


One Out of Many

by Stoic_Zee



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Accidental Torture for Steve, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Peggy Carter, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes is the Winter Soldier, Established Relationship, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Major Steve Rogers is still the best Super Soldier, Multiple Super Soldiers, Real Torture for Bucky, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers is Captain America, Steve is an outlier, Super Soldier Serum, Super Soldiers have a hierarchy, They Get that Hug, also hand jobs, but he never falls off the train, but only because the other guy died first
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-14 01:12:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7145978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stoic_Zee/pseuds/Stoic_Zee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the Project Rebirth receives the green light, Steve Rogers isn't the only test subject. He is one of thirty.</p>
<p>After Steve's "accident" during the Hydra attack, he and SGR #2 are assigned to the USO's Captain America war-bond tour. Luckily, Steve's job is to protect Dr. Erskine and continue his work as a test guinea pig. Stanley is the one who has to wear the costume and make a fool of himself in front of the entire country.</p>
<p>Another Hydra attack convinces them that Erskine will be safer on a base, and it will give him a chance to examine the other Super Soldiers, whose changes are more alarming than Steve's. Steve is finally on the front lines, but Red Skull isn't the only super human he has to watch out for. Luckily, the Howling Commandos are there to have his back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have had this idea rattling around in my brain forever, and I hope you will enjoy it too.
> 
> This story is rated mostly for violence, but there should eventually be some sex. Steve and Bucky keep their closeness on the down-low for the early part of the story, and Steve has sex with at least one woman, but that's only mentioned briefly.

Steve woke up. He remembered taking a bullet for Erskine and feeling the blood pour out of him. He hadn’t minded too much at the time—shock and blood loss did that to a person. He thought it was fair that he used his big body to shield the guy who gave it to him. He had the faint regret that’d never get to do anything else with it, but there were other super-soldiers to fight the war, and he knew he had died saving a good man. So, waking up was about the most surprising thing Steve could imagine.

When he opened his eyes, all he saw was white. He knew he wasn’t in heaven or in hell because he was freezing cold and lying on something hard. Then his other senses kicked in, and Steve revised his opinion about being in hell because he was in agony.

He looked down at his chest—the center of his pain but nothing like the heart trouble or the asthma he had spent his whole life struggling against—and saw red, white, and silver. The silver came from medical instruments which were buried in his chest and half-hidden by loose, flopping skin. The red and the white came from him—his bones, his muscles, his blood.

Steve couldn’t hold back the scream of agony and fear. It never occurred to him to try. He turned his head, looking this way and that, desperate for an escape. All he saw were bug-eyed doctors in identical surgical masks.

He struggled to sit up, and that finally got a reaction. Hands approached him from all sides trying to hold him down, but Steve wasn’t a runt anymore. He shrugged the hands away and surged to his feet. Something cracked and crunched. Steve was afraid to look down to see if it came from him. He managed to take three steps before the pain and effort of his exertion overwhelmed him, and he took a header into the concrete floor.

Steven woke up again. This time he was warm and on a real bed. He shot upright and pressed a hand to his chest. It didn’t hurt, and he was wearing a shirt, but his heart was beating twice as fast as it ever had.

“Steven, Steven, calm down.”

Someone was saying his name. Steve raised his head and focused his gaze on Dr. Erskine sitting in a chair next to his bed. The doctor was watching him in concern. His hands hovered in the air like he wanted to touch Steve but didn’t want to startle him by accident.

“Doctor?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Erskine. “Are you with me Steve?”

“I—” Steve’s eyes darted around. He was in a small room with a window. There was only the one bed and chair and a little side table with a glass of water. The walls were pale grey, clean but faded from light-exposure. It looked nothing like the white room he had woken up in before.

“Where are we?” asked Steve.

“We are still in New York,” said Erskine. “This is a property secretly owned by the SSR. Do you remember what happened?”

“I woke up on an operating table,” blurted Steve. He had yet to move his hand from his chest.

Erskine’s face fell. “I am so sorry, Steven. I had no idea that the serum would work like that.”

“Why? What happened?” demanded Steve.

“Do you remember the procedure? And what happened after?” asked Erskine.

Steve took a deep breath. It was surprising how easy it was. He felt himself relax a little with the extra oxygen. He dropped his hand to his lap.

“One of the others saw man with a gun. He was shooting at you, and I stepped in front of the bullet,” said Steve.

“Yes,” said Erskine finally reaching out to put a hand on Steve’s shoulder. “I owe you my life.”

“You don’t owe me, doctor,” said Steve.

“You may change your mind later,” said Erskine. “The man was a Hydra agent. He shot you in the heart and set off a bomb to try to steal a vial of my serum.”

“Was anyone else hurt?” asked Steve. The other men he had been training with were there as were Col. Phillips, Mr. Stark, and Peggy—Agent Carter.

“The man killed several guards on the way out,” said Erskine. “But you were the most seriously injured. You must understand with the location of the wound and the amount of blood, we thought you were dead.”

“Dead?” repeated Steve.

“The attack was six days ago. We put your body in the morgue until we had time to examine you,” continued Erskine, his face solemn. “Yesterday, we took you out to perform an autopsy. We removed the bullet and bone and you healed and woke up.”

“I don’t understand,” said Steve staring hopelessly.

“I think that the cold preserved your brain function, and when your body warmed up on the operating table, the serum’s healing factor repaired the damage to your heart,” said Erskine. “I did not realize it would be so effective, if it hadn’t been, we would have killed you again. I am so sorry, Steven.”

“Can’t blame you for not knowin’ I was still alive,” said Steve distantly. “After the bullet hit, I thought I was dead too.”

Erskine squeezed his shoulder reassuringly. “You most certainly are not, and next time we will be more careful.”

Steve took another deep breath. The feeling was still novel. He had only been breathing like this for a day apparently. Death had been a constant companion since he was a child. His mother had called the priest for last-rites half-a-dozen times when he was growing up. Only reason Bucky hadn’t done it was because the bastard was too stubborn to give up on him. Steve would be over this particular meeting in no time—as long as he something to occupy his time.

“What am I supposed to do next?” asked Steve.

Erskine met his gaze seriously. “Steven, you have very nearly died in service to your country. It is well within your rights to go home and live out the remainder of your life.”

Steve rejected the idea instantly. “No, I couldn’t do that. I didn’t die, and the war’s still going. Even if you send me home, I’ll just go to another recruitment center. They won’t turn me away now.”

“They certainly won’t,” agreed Erskine. “Once you are recovered—”

“I feel great, Doc,” said Steve. “Better than I ever have.”

Erskine sighed. “Once _I_ am recovered, you will be assisting Cpt. Reynolds in security for the tour.”

“Tour?” asked Steve. “What tour?”

While Steve was lying on the floor (almost) bleeding to death, another volunteer, Stanley Reynolds, chased down the Hydra agent. Some lucky soul had taken a picture of him using a cab door as a shield, and now the country was salivating over the heroics of Captain America.

(All of the Project Rebirth volunteers received an automatic promotion to captain. Steve had been posthumously promoted to major. He kept insisting they should take it back since he hadn’t died, but everyone else insisted it was the intent that mattered, and it wasn’t as if he was on the battlefield commanding soldiers.)

Senator Brandt had jumped on the bandwagon and wanted to use Captain America to promote the sale of war bonds. Steve was dubious about the reliability of a man who had a Hydra agent in his entourage, but everyone else on the hastily assembled USO tour had been thoroughly vetted by the SSR.

Reynolds was going to tour the country as Captain America. Steve was going to head the security team for Reynolds and the other members of the tour and Dr. Erskine. With the attack on the testing facility, the SSR no longer felt it was safe to keep the good doctor in one place. He would be going with the tour to keep him mobile and so he could study the effects of the serum on Reynolds and Steve. The other twenty-eight soldiers had been shipped to the front the day after the experiment while Brandt was pitching the idea of using the famous super-soldier to make money (to support the war effort) and Steve was in the morgue.

Reynolds was thrilled with his assignment. Steve was less so, but he was part of the U.S. Army technically and soldiers followed orders. Everyone except Dr. Erskine thought he was crazy for wanting to fight at the front, but that was nothing new for Steve.

(Steve suspected Dr. Erskine felt guilty over the bullet and the autopsy and was glad to keep him safe in the States. Steve never told him about the nightmares where he woke up on the table too weak to move or make a sound and had to watch the identical-looking doctors rip out his insides piece by piece. Steve tried his best not to think about that moment at all, but his memory was working better than ever and sometimes it was hard to think of anything else.)

Once the tour got started, Steve’s opinion didn’t improve all that much. The chorus girls were something to look at, but as Bucky said that night before he left, all the men were overseas, and there were plenty of women interested in him these days. Captain America’s costume was something else. Steve winced at the thought of being seen in it, but Reynolds loved the attention. The actual production was… very popular with its target audience, and unfortunately after only a few shows Steve had all of the lines memorized.

Steve preferred it when they were traveling. Instead of having to protect a whole venue, he only had to watch the train itself. Dr. Erskine’s mobile laboratory was one of several identical tour cars, and he rarely left it except in Steve’s company.

Steve and Reynolds also participated in experiments. At first the experiments were endurance-based. How much weight could they lift? How fast could they run? How far? How hard could they hit? What were their reflexes like?

Then Dr. Erskine caught Steve re-reading one of his tactics books at a lightning fast pace and the other questions started. How much material could they memorize at once? How was their accuracy? How much of the material did they understand? How long did it take them to learn new skills? He also slipped some civics and ethics questions into the mix that always left Steve feeling conflicted but Reynolds told him not to worry about so much.

Steve did more of the tests than Reynolds, who often had to bow out for practice or for glad-handing with the Senator, and Dr. Erskine was always very enthusiastic about his results. It was also obvious after a couple of months that Steve’s extra efforts were paying off. He beat Reynolds in almost every sparring match, solved problems—mathematical and tactical—more quickly, and was able to absorb more information in fewer lessons.

Reynolds laughed it off saying that just meant Steve deserved to be a major, since he was always better than a captain. It made Steve wonder how he compared to the soldiers on the front. Erskine told him it was difficult to compare. They couldn’t do standard tests in the middle of a battlefield, but from the reports he received from Mr. Stark, Steve and Reynolds seemed about level with their peers. Though Erskine wasn’t seeing any signs of abnormalities that Stark reported on some of the soldiers.

“Abnormalities?” asked Steve. Reynolds couldn’t hide his worried expression either.

“Calcium deposits on the bones is Howard’s best guess,” said Erskine. “It makes some of them look quite frightening.” He didn’t tell them it was nothing to worry about, and Steve remembered the story about Red Skull Erskine had shared with him the night before the test.

After that revelation, Reynolds and Steve checked themselves and each other for any sign of abnormal growths following their daily sparring sessions.

Sparring was one of Steve’s favorite activities. It felt so good to move in a body that worked properly. Reynolds enjoyed it too, even if he did lose most of the time. After a while, Steve noticed that the girls came to watch too. The first time he noticed one of them giggling, well, Reynolds had crowed about his victory for days.

Steve enjoyed winning fights for a change, but eventually they became repetitive. He mentioned it to Erskine, and the next time they stopped in a city with an SSR office, they were met by a wizened Japanese man—who never told them his name merely let them call him Sensei—whose purpose was to teach them a different way to fight.

Reynolds had been vocally disapproving, and Steve had privately doubted the old man would be able to compete with their strength or speed, at least until he dumped them both on their asses in less than a minute. Steve and Reynolds had paid very close attention after that, especially once they got started on the weapons. Steve was particular fan of the _nunchaku_ since they could block hits as well as make them. Reynolds had a particular talent with the staff and admitted nostalgically that it reminded him of playing stick-ball as a kid.

While Reynolds couldn’t attend every lesson with Sensei because of rehearsal, Steve learned a lot from the old man, including Japanese because the man only understood a handful of words in English. When they were finally to the point that they could have a conversation, Sensei said that the attack on Pearl Harbor was one thing, the islands of the Pacific Ocean always fought one another, but for the Emperor to ally with a man such as Hitler was a great dishonor for the country. Steve and Sensei agreed to disagree about Hawaii, and Steve learned how write hiragana, how to draw characters with an ink brush, and how to properly make tea. (When Steve eventually caught up with Peggy, he had to learn how to properly make tea all over again, but he did miss the serenity of the Japanese tea ceremony and using the little whisk.)

When Steve realized how easy it was to learn to speak Japanese—learning how to draw kanji was another matter—he asked Dr. Erskine for lessons in German, just in case he ever made it to the front. The doctor was happy to teach his language to someone who wouldn’t glare at him for being a Kraut and went above and beyond by teaching him Polish, medical Latin, Greek, and a little French too.

The chorus girls were very impressed to hear Steve’s French, enough so that Reynolds learned the language too, and they taught Steve more of the language than Dr. Erskine had managed. Then the girls taught him Italian, a bit of Spanish, and Sasha taught him Russian (and helped refine his skill in cunnilingus, but that was a private lesson).

Between his new language skills, his church Latin, his Romanian from Bucky, and his Gaelic from his own mother, Steve was sometimes surprised that he could still manage to think in English. But he could feel the itch to fight coursing through his veins like blood, and until he reached the front, all Steve could do was prepare, and so he learned everything he could from whatever source he could. (The girls came from everywhere and were a wealth of information. They knew, most notably, how to apply make-up, how to stretch to prevent muscles cramps, how to cook over an open flame, how to tie secure knots _and_ easy to escape knots, and how to skin a rabbit and pluck a hen—Mary Frances was from Tennessee originally and after Sasha was the most intimidating of the women.)

Steve’s least favorite part of the tour were the days when Reynolds went out with Senator Brandt, and he had to stand-in for Captain America during the rehearsals or when they were blocking on a new stage. He danced around with the tin shield and pretended it was an agility test though he refused to actually perform in front of a crowd, no matter how much the girls pleaded.

As the tour progressed and Captain America began making more money, Senator Brandt had to borrow Reynolds more and more often, so much so that when they reached California, Steve made two whole Captain America movies by himself when Reynolds couldn’t make it to the studio. (Reynolds pointed out that Steve got his wished for demotion whenever he wore the costume. Steve ordered him to shut up.)

Steve’s other major contribution to the propaganda machine that was Captain America was the comic. Early in the tour, Steve had been sketching a few of Reynolds more outlandish scenes in between checking the perimeter around the theater and added a bit of dialogue that didn’t require audience participation. One of Senator Brandt’s aides—probably not a Hydra agent—had gotten ahold of the sketch book and shown it to Brandt. The senator had convinced Steve to draw a complete comic, and when it sold well, asked for more. But by that point, Erskine was really putting them through their paces and Steve had to say no. (He kept his copy of the first issue though, and even Reynolds agreed it was a much better story than Steve’s replacement drew.)

After the filming, Steve had to pay more attention to security. Hydra had someone how gotten definitive word that Erskine was with the USO tour and started sending agents to investigate.

One of the chorus girls, Angie Roth, was even captured by one of Hydra’s scouts though Steve took him out so quick, she thought he was just a mugger. It was the first time Steve had killed a man, and after Angie was safe, he had to take a moment to vomit further down the alley. (That was the only time he threw up, and he figured it was because he came so close to losing a civilian.)

Steve had had a dozen SSR agents under his command for the whole tour, but he requested another dozen after the near miss and had them on constant eight-hour rotation. The increased security worked for a while, and twice Steve was able to track the Hydra scouts back to listening posts and once to a safe-house big enough to contain a large weapons-cache, which thrilled and infuriated the SSR agents in turn. The information was invaluable, but none of them had realized Hydra was that well entrenched in the States.

The girls noticed the increased security and started to worry. Reynolds started turning down Brandt’s invitations so he could help Steve look after the girls. Erskine had finished his tests on Steve and Reynolds after the first few months and without pressing reason to stay was making plans with the SSR about going underground again. It was the latter that forced Hydra’s hand.

They cut the tracks and assaulted the train with forty operatives. (Later, the SSR estimated this to be all of Hydra’s agents on the West Coast, but Steve thought this was wishful thinking on their part.) Somehow they had correctly identified Erskine’s train car, but half of the assault team went for the girls as a distraction.

Steve and his back up had the easy job. Hydra wanted Erskine alive, so he could reproduce the serum for them. They never shot through the train car’s walls. Reynolds and his team had it worse. The girls were completely expendable to Hydra. They tossed a grenade into one of the sleeping cars. Reynolds got it out of the train and got the door closed before it went off. But he also got caught in the blast. He was missing half his guts and still took out three Hydra agents before a fourth emptied a gun into Reynolds skull. Steve arrived to provide back up in time to see the man shoot Reynolds but not in time to save him, and the sight of his friend’s head turning to mush like that haunted Steve for days.

When the assault was over, every Hydra agent was dead, but Steve had lost five SSR agents and Reynolds. Ten more SSR agents were wounded and two of the chorus girls had been lightly injured by shrapnel. Everyone was shaken by the relentless brutality of the assault.

The worst part was that, even with Reynolds dead, they couldn’t let Captain America die. He was more than a man, he was a symbol. While the SSR figured out what to do with Erskine, the show had to go on, and for the time being, Steve was the only man capable of filling the costume.

(The second worst part was that they tried to tell the girls that Reynolds was only injured, not dead. When Alice asked if Stanley would come back when he healed up, Steve saw red. He knew that the SSR wanted Hydra to think their attack had done nothing, but Stanley Gershwin Reynolds had given his life to save these women, and he deserved recognition for his bravery. He’d had to hold Alice while she cried, and a few more wept even harder, but there were others who looked as grim and steely-eyed as Steve. Some of them had known the truth already.)

Steve did five shows as Captain America before they announced the USO tour would be heading overseas to entertain the troops. The girls would keep the showing going to raise morale, but Steve and Dr. Erskine would leave the production when they rendezvoused with Col. Phillips’ command. The SSR decided that if Hydra was going after the doctor anyway, he might as well be somewhere he could do some good, and the reports about the super-soldiers on the front had taken a dark turn.

Most of the girls allowed themselves to be excited about the trip overseas though they were more subdued than they had been before the attack. Steve knew several of SSR agents, who would continue to act as security during the show’s foreign tour, felt the same as the girls. Steve was filled with restless energy. Every day they got closer to the front, and Steve was ready to fight.


	2. Chapter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the MCU wiki and my head-canon disagreed on the roster of the Howling Commandos and what ranks they were, so I went with my head-canon. In order of rank: Lt. James Falsworth, Sgt. James Barnes, Cpl. Timothy “Dum Dum” Dugan, Pvt. Gabe Jones, Pvt. Jim Morita, and member of the French Resistance, Jacques Dernier.
> 
> All of Steve and Dernier's French came from Google-translate. If there is a serious problem, then I'll change it, but I'm not that emotionally invested.

Steve had found an out-of-the-way corner to tuck himself into and was working on a marvelously self-pitying drawing of himself as a monkey in the Captain America costume.

Dr. Erskine had been whisked away to review Stark’s notes on the other super soldiers. The USO girls had started their show. Steve had helped them set up but wasn’t performing, which was a relief and a disappointment. He hated being Captain America, but there wasn’t anything for Maj. Steve Rogers to do. They hadn’t even found him a real uniform yet, which hadn’t been a problem while they were on tour and he was supposed to disguise himself as a regular fella, but meant he was stuck wearing a horrible mix of his costume and an extra pair of Albert’s pants—though they weren’t dumb enough to dress up a guy like Hitler in front of the troops—since Steve’s luggage had been misplaced somewhere during the flight. Hopefully, it was on this side of the Atlantic.

“A dancing monkey? I think you’re selling yourself short, Major,” said a familiar voice.

Steve rose to his feet in one graceful motion. “Agent Carter. You look…” Peggy was still beautiful, still wearing her defiantly bright red lipstick with her hair in gentle curls, but there was a wariness in her eyes when she looked at him and tense lines on her face that he could see despite the make-up. “…tired.”

“And you still don’t know how to talk to a woman,” said Carter arching a brow.

Steve back-pedaled immediately. After traveling with chorus girls so long, he knew better than to draw attention to what a lady was hiding beneath her face paint. “I apologize. You look wonderful. How have you been?”

Peggy relaxed slightly. “Busy. It’s been rough these last few weeks.”

Steve nodded at the camp. “Everyone looks pretty grim.”

“They would,” said Peggy. “This is all that’s left of the 107th.”

Steve’s brain worked faster than ever, and his memory was near perfect, so it wasn’t as though he didn’t know exactly what he was doing. It just wasn’t until he was in the air and on his way to find Bucky that he realized how disrespectful he had been.

“I shouldn’t have barged into the Col. Phillip’s office like that,” said Steve aloud trying to gauge by Peggy and Stark’s reactions exactly how much trouble he would be in if he made it back.

Peggy looked faintly surprised. “You were upset to hear about your friend.”

“Yeah,” said Steve feeling his throat tighten. “But that doesn’t give me the right to disrespect a superior officer.”

Stark laughed from his seat in the cockpit. It wasn’t a particularly happy sound but full of disbelief and resignation. He sounded nothing like the confident, smooth-talking inventor at the expo. “You are something else, Rogers.”

“Yes,” said Peggy. “Taking a civilian plane behind enemy lines to stage a one-man rescue mission despite orders to the contrary is a shining example of military decorum and procedure.”

Steve ducked his head at Agent Carter’s reprimand, but he couldn’t abandon all hope of seeing Bucky again. “Col. Phillips never said I couldn’t do it just that nobody else would. And I could’ve walked.”

Stark chuckled again and sounded a little livelier this time. “Erskine’s reports said you were goal-oriented.”

“Bucky called it mule-headed stubbornness,” said Steve.

Peggy took a sharp breath. “Major, you know there’s a good chance your friend is dead.”

Steve remembered Reynolds’ shattered skull and imagined it was Bucky lying, broken on the ground. His new, perfect heart skipped a beat.

“I know,” he said quietly. “But I have to try. Besides,” he gestured at his costumed figure, “Captain America wouldn’t let a little thing like an enemy base hold him back.”

Peggy winced. “You could have at least brought more weaponry than a handgun.”

Steve blushed. “Didn’t want to attract any more attention trying to get one, not when I hadn’t been issued orders yet. I’m pretty good at hand-to-hand these days if I run out of bullets.”

Peggy frowned but gave him the radio _she_ had had time to secure and told him how to use it. Then the anti-aircraft ordinance started to fly, and Steve was on his own.

Getting into the base was cartoonishly easy. Finding the prisoners was a stroke of luck. When they looked at him and demanded to know who he was, Steve had answered Captain America because it was partially true, the whole truth was even stranger and involved too much explanation, and at least some of the American soldiers would have heard the name. Find Bucky alive was a sign from God. Steve wasn’t too late this time, even if seeing him lying on a table like that brought back bad memories.

Getting out of the base proved to be a bit trickier what with it exploding around them and all. The brief fight with Red Skull, and the sight of the man beneath the mask, was more convincing than Steve needed that the madman had to be stopped.

Once they were outside, Steve was confronted with a mass of aimlessly shuffling soldiers. He wondered who was in charge before he realized, with a sinking feeling, that _he_ was probably the ranking officer and that there was no way they would listen to him.

“Barnes! Barnes, you bastard! You’re alive!”

Bucky was almost run over by a man in a bowler hat. He staggered and would have fallen, if he hadn’t been half-leaning on Steve already, who just bent his knees and rocked with the blow.

“Dum Dum,” said Bucky straightening to clap the man on the shoulder. “You made it, and your hat too.”

Bowler Hat—Dum Dum had to be a nickname—was followed by the handful of men Steve had personally released from the cells. They all wore the same tired but viciously satisfied expression. Steve was pretty satisfied by the state of the base himself.

The British officer led the group and was the first to speak. “Captain America, was it?”

“Steve Rogers,” he offered.

“Lt. James Falsworth. We’ve noticed that you don’t seem to have brought any back-up.”

Steve graciously ignored the way Bucky started muttering about stubborn idiots with no sense of self-preservation. “I’m told command would have come up with a plan in a few weeks.”

There was a solemn silence from the group of men. It was entirely possible that they all would have died within a few weeks.

“Well, we appreciate the initiative,” said Falsworth. He hesitated. “Was there _any_ sort of extraction plan?”

Steve pulled the transponder Peggy had given him out of his pocket and winced as Bucky started swearing at him. Steve had heard the bullet hit while he was plowing his way through Hydra’s rank-and-file, but since he hadn’t been hit himself, he hadn’t paid the shot much attention. They all watched as bits and pieces of delicate electronics tumbled to the ground. Steve tucked the device out of sight.

“Walking it is then,” said Falsworth. He immediately frowned.

Steve looked past the group at the hundreds of men. Some of them were clearly injured, and none of them were in that great shape after God knew how many days of imprisonment.

“I caught a ride with some supply trucks back that way,” said Steve gesturing toward the former loading dock. “They didn’t have time to unload all of them. There might be something useful on one of them. Or someone mechanically minded might be able to get them running, and we could load up anyone who can’t walk.”

Bucky sighed. “I’ll take a look.”

The Japanese-American from Fresno lifted his chin. “I’ll help.”

Steve kept half-an-ear on their conversation as they walked off and learned the other man’s name was also James, but he went by Jim at home and, of course, Morita in the army.

“Is there anyone keeping watch right now?” asked Steve. “Schmidt might have run, but his people are fanatics. If any of them were off-base, they’ll show up wanting blood. An explosion of this size will have attracted the Nazi’s attention too.”

“Dugan,” said Falsworth. “Round-up a few of the healthier fellows and coordinate a watch. We’ll formalize it once we get under way.”

“Yes sir,” said Dum Dum. “As long as get to drive the tank on the way out.”

“As long as _we_ get to drive the tank,” interjected the black man. “Unless you’ve learned to read German already.”

“Whatever you say, Jones,” said Dum Dum. “Help me round up some suckers.”

Steve looked at the Frenchmen, who looked disappointed by the other’s disappearance. _“Voulez-vous dire à vos camarades du plan, s'il vous plaît?”_[1]

_“Oui, monsieur **[2]**,”_ he said his surprise evident. _“Je suis Jacque Dernier avec la Résistance. **[3]**”_

“It’s an honor,” said Steve as formally as he could.

Dernier smirked. “ _Naturellement **[4]**_ ,” he said and walked off.

Falsworth was staring at him in surprise. “Are you actually a captain?”

“No,” said Steve.

“Oh,” said Falsworth. “Well, you’re definitely command material. Why haven’t the Americans promoted you?”

“I’m a major,” said Steve and thoroughly enjoyed the bug-eyed expression on the Brit’s face. He held up a hand when the other man’s gaze turned to Steve’s eclectic outfit. “It’s a long story, and there’s a thirty mile hike between us and the frontline.”

“Of course, sir,” said Falsworth. “Do we know which direction that is?”

Steve recalled the aerial photos of the facility, and the map which Peggy had shown him on the plane, but he figured that would be a stretch for the recent captives to believe. Luckily, the road he had come in on was going in the right direction for the first ten miles or so.

“That way,” said Steve. “Now, did I hear something about a tank?”

“We’ll see if we can pry Dugan out of it,” said Falsworth.

They took the tank with them. There were only so many working vehicles, and it wasn’t as though the group of men on foot could outpace it. Steve thought Howard Stark would want to study it as much as the glowing box Steve had picked up in the factory. Not to mention, it reassured the men to have such an intimidating weapon on their side.

Once the convoy got under way, there wasn’t much chatter. Everyone was exhausted from days of hard labor and the adrenaline of the escape was starting to ebb. Steve had been right about the supplies. Some of it was even food—enough food for everyone to get a few mouthfuls—but they were waiting until nightfall when they stopped to break it out. Steve was more concerned by the lack of water. Healthy men could go weeks without food if they had to but only days without water, and none of these men were particularly healthy.

They did encounter one Hydra cell, who were promptly annihilated by the men on watch, and that tiny bit of action was enough to spur on the rest of them for another few hours.

“Not that they don’t deserve it,” said Falsworth after observing the carnage. “But are we not taking prisoners? Someone to interrogate at least?”

Steve grimaced. “Hasn’t done any good so far. They all have cyanide pills, and they all use them.”

“You’ve encountered these Hydra agents before?” asked Falsworth speculatively.

“Yes,” said Steve not ready to go into detail just yet. “You haven’t?”

“Not until I was captured,” said Falsworth. “The same was true for most of the men, except the 107th, and they’d only heard the name.”

Steve nodded in acknowledgement. That aligned with what he knew of the situation. Hitler wasn’t about to announce that the leader of his deep-science division had gone rogue. The Allies didn’t want to rouse a panic by announcing they had two megalomaniacal dictators ready and willing to conqueror the world. Until Hydra moved out in the open, they would remain a secret. Even in the comics, Captain America fought against Nazis. Though Steve had hidden the Hydra symbol in a few places in his comic as a reminder of the secret battle.

The convoy eventually slowed to a crawl, and Steve called a halt roughly an hour before dusk. They didn’t need to lose anyone stumbling around in the dark, and no one looked like they could travel much further. Even Bucky, who had rallied from whatever torture they had done to him, was starting to flag.

The soldiers clumped together in little groups. There was no particular order that Steve could see, and he realized they must have stuck with their cellmates rather returning to their original units. Steve joined Bucky and the command group as he was starting to think of it, and they dug into their handfuls of dry cereal with gusto.

“Alright,” said Dum Dum once they were finished. “I’ve got to ask. What the hell are you wearing?”

“That’s no way to talk to a superior officer,” snapped Falsworth.

“I’m sure the captain can do his own scolding,” said Dugan.

Steve cleared his throat. “Major.” There was the bug-eyed staring again. “You can understand why I didn’t say anything right away.”

_“Mais je vous ai entendu dire le capitaine d'Amérique, **[5]**”_ said Dernier.

“Definitely Captain America,” agreed Jones.

“Wait, Captain America like those terrible comic books they keep sending us?” asked Morita.

Steve closed his eyes and sighed. “Yes.”

Mortia, Dugan, and Jones started to snicker. Falsworth and Dernier, who had never had any reason to hear of Captain America, shook their heads at the hapless Americans. The only one who didn’t find the situation amusing was Bucky.

“Jesus, Steve, what the fuck happened to you?” he demanded.

Steve tried to keep a blank face. “They lost my bag on the flight over, and I hadn’t had time to visit the quartermaster before I heard about…” he gestured over his shoulder at the mass of former prisoners.

Bucky scowled. “That is not what I meant, you little shit. That’s the same innocent face you tried to pull on Sister Agatha. She knew better then, and I know better now.”

“Wait, you’re the Steve that sends Jimmy those fantastic pin-up drawings?” asked Dugan in disbelief. He looked at Bucky. “I thought you said he was rejected because of medical problems.”

“He was,” growled Bucky. “Four times.”

Steve tried not to grimace. Bucky was already mad at him, and he hated to make it worse.

“Good grief,” said Falsworth. “What could possibly be wrong with him?”

Steve closed his eyes as Bucky started to recite, “Asthma, diabetes, heart murmur, scoliosis, color-blindness, partial deafness, chronic illness, scarlet fever, rheumatic fever, sinusitis, family history of poor health, and let’s not forget he used to be two feet shorter and hundred pounds lighter.”

“Not two feet, Buck,” protested Steve weakly.

Bucky stared him down.

“Foot-and-a-half,” muttered Steve.

“ _Mon Dieu **[6]**_ ,” said Dernier. The others were all eyeing Steve like he would drop dead any second. Steve would have been offended if he hadn’t become inured to such looks by the time he was five.

“So what happened?” repeated Bucky.

Steve grimaced. It was classified. But Peggy and Colonel Phillips were stationed with the 107th. It was possible that he already knew some of it.

“Have you heard of the SSR?” he asked.

Bucky and Dum Dum both paled while the others simply looked confused.

“What, like Russia?” asked Morita.

“That’s the _U_.S.S.R.,” said Falsworth dismissively.

“The Strategic Scientific Reserve,” said Bucky quietly. “They showed up a few months back. All officially-unofficial. They’ve got these super soldiers, I guess you’d call ‘em. They can do all sorts of things regular guys can’t manage.”

“That’s the gist of it,” said Steve. He considered the men sitting around him. As the Brits said, in for a penny, in for a pound. “The SSR is a top-secret Allied agency. Project Rebirth was an experiment to create super soldiers to counter Hydra’s advanced weaponry.”

“And it actually worked?” asked Jones in disbelief.

Steve gestured at himself. “You heard my medical history.”

“But you look normal,” blurted Dugan. He shifted uncomfortably beneath the group’s collective stares. “The super soldiers at the base…a lot of them look… not normal.”

“That can be a side-effect,” said Steve keeping an eye on Bucky. “Like with Schmidt.”

Bucky breathed in sharply. “You know, I was really hoping that was a hallucination.”

“What’s this?” asked Falsworth. “Schmidt, as in, the man who ran the base?”

“The leader of Hydra,” said Steve.

“You know how they called him Red Skull?” said Bucky. “Well, they weren’t exaggerating.”

This led to a rousing discussion of how Bucky and Steve escaped the base. Then the others shared their stories of how they had overpowered the guards. By the time the tales were exchanged, everyone was exhausted. Even Steve was feeling the siren call of sleep and he only needed a few hours each night.

Steve woke up early, before dawn, and extracted himself from the puppy-pile of soldiers huddling together for warmth. He made his way around what was less of an encampment and more of a sprawling blob and spoke to the handful of sentries that noticed him. Not many did, but Steve had learned how to sneak from the SSR agents he had worked with, and he was sure the men would notice a normal patrol.

Steve stopped by the trucks doubling as medical rigs and learned, to his dismay, that three of the rescued soldiers had died during the night. He discussed the possibility of taking their bodies back with the few medics that had been captured, but they all agreed the corpses would start to decompose before they could reach safety.

Steve collected the men’s tags and found a large enough plot not too far off the main road. His shield doubled as an excellent shovel, and in less than an hour, he had dug a respectably-sized grave for the three men.

One of the medics wrapped the bodies in a bit of spare tarp, and a few of the able-bodied men, who had been wakened by Steve’s activity, helped him carry the bodies to the grave. One of them offered to help Steve bury the men, but Steve asked him to carve the names on the nearest tree as a marker instead. Steve had energy to spare, and they needed to get moving before they lost anyone else.

Bucky was awake and not thrilled to find Steve missing. Steve endured the quiet dressing down with grace. Normally he hated being fussed over, but now that he didn’t strictly need it, he was happy to let Bucky rant. His friend was still obviously rattled from whatever they had done to him at the Hydra base. Steve was hoping Dr. Erskine could give them a better idea of what that was when they got back.

An equally meagre breakfast that mirrored their equally meagre dinner was the end of their supplies, and then they were on their way again. Steve, Falsworth, and Bucky had a brief consult with the lead medic about water. The men would need some soon, and Steve wasn’t exactly sure where the closest river was to their location. Their concern proved unnecessary as at about noon it started to rain, and rain, and rain.

When it got too dark to see clearly—God knew what time it actually was beneath the cloud-cover—Steve called a halt. They crammed as many men as they could into and under the trucks and the tank. The rest of them had to settle for bits of tarp, tree-cover, and body heat.

Steve managed to stick his shield sideways into a tree, which provided some protection from the rain but not much more than anyone else had. He and Bucky spent the night curled next to each other. Steve woke-up twice. Once when the rain stopped, and again when the cold made him dream of the autopsy table.

Steve was never one to wake-up screaming, mostly because he cut the sound off before he could start, but Bucky was close enough to feel him jerk awake.

“You alright?” he asked. There was undertone that implied that Bucky knew the answer and would not be pleased by any sort of smart-ass reply. Steve was very familiar with that tone.

“Cold woke me up,” said Steve.

“You’re cold?” asked Bucky doubtfully. “You’re like a fucking furnace.”

“Guess I am,” said Steve.

“How did this happen?” asked Bucky. “You wrote me and said you got a job with the USO. I thought you were painting backgrounds or something.”

“I did have a job with the USO,” said Steve and flinched when Bucky pinched his arm.

“Don’t be a shit,” said Bucky.

Steve looked away. “Do you remember the recruitment center at the Expo?” He felt more than saw Bucky’s nod. “Dr. Erskine was there. He was the one who developed the super soldier serum. He saw how many times I had applied and asked me if I wanted to kill Nazis.”

“What’d you say?” asked Bucky, even though he knew Steve so well he could probably answer for him.

“I said I didn’t want to kill anybody,” said Steve. “But I couldn’t stand by and do nothing while other men were laying down their lives. I might’ve mentioned not liking bullies.”

“Course you did,” muttered Bucky.

“Anyway,” said Steve, “it must have been the right answer because the doc signed off on my enlistment form, and I reported to Camp Lehigh for basic.”

“I let you out of my sight for five minutes and look what happens,” said Bucky. He glared at the star visible on Steve’s chest then carefully rested his hand over it. “Are you really all fixed up now?”

“Better than new,” said Steve. It wasn’t like that was hard. Even as a child he’d been sickly.

“You said it hurt,” muttered Bucky.

“You tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine,” said Steve knowing Bucky liked fuss even less than Steve.

Bucky sighed. “Fuck. I don’t know. We were at Azzano—the 107th and a few of those super soldiers—and these guys attacked with I don’t know what. Those weapons they were making at the factory. If one of those hit you, you were dead, Steve. Just a smudge of black. I saw one of the supes taken out with a single hit. Didn’t see any of the others after that. I was the one who ended up in charge at the end. I ordered the surrender. I had to.”

“Of course you did Buck, you had to protect your men,” said Steve as soothingly as possible. On the inside, he felt rage. He hadn’t known there were other super soldiers on the field at Azzano. What good was all their power, if they ran off the moment things got tough?

“You wouldn’t have done it,” said Bucky.

“Some people have called me a stubborn punk with a death wish,” said Steve.

“You’re the best guy I know,” said Bucky. “You wouldn’t have surrender to those creeps.”

Steve gave it some thought, since Bucky seemed hung up on the matter. “If it were just me, you’re probably right. But you had men to look after. Surrendering was the only way to save them. I might have done the same thing.”

“You’re lyin’ to make me feel better,” said Bucky,

“I am telling the truth to make you feel better,” corrected Steve. “Now what happened to you after?”

“We surrendered, and they carted us off to the factory to work. Every day or so they’d yank some poor bastard out of the cages and we never saw him again. Last time it was me,” he said.

“And?” prompted Steve.

“And nothing,” said Bucky. “They pumped me full of drugs and shone some weird lights in my face. I thought they were going to ask me something, but they never did. What’s the point of…of...treating a man like that, if they aren’t going to ask him questions?”

Steve bit down on his tongue so hard he tasted blood. He swallowed and the wound healed over. As carefully as possible, he freed up a hand to loop around Bucky’s shoulder and pull him close. Bucky didn’t even resist, just buried his face in Steve’s shoulder and tried not to fall to pieces.

“They’re trying to recreate the super soldier serum,” whispered Steve. He felt Bucky go tense.

“Do you think it did anything?” he whispered back.

“I practically had to carry you out of that room, Buck, and five minutes later you were walking a tightrope over a fire pit. I don’t think it did nothing,” admitted Steve.

“Am I going to turn into a monster like that Red Skull?” asked Bucky.

“No,” said Steve instantly. “No, Buck. Red Skull turned into a monster ‘cause that’s what he was on the inside. You, James Buchanan Barnes, are the best man I know. You’re always savin’ my bacon. Probably saved my life more than once. You’ll be fine. I promise.”

“Christ, Steve,” muttered Bucky.

Steve ignored the wetness on his collar. It was still dampish. He could pretend it was just accumulated rain.

After a while Bucky gathered himself and shrugged off Steve’s arm, who let it fall with regret. He didn’t move too far though, it was still pretty cold.

“Your turn,” said Bucky.

“There were about sixty of us at the start. Fifty-nine strapping young men hand-picked from the best of the army and one Steve Rogers. They got the number down to thirty after a couple of weeks, and we trucked out to this secret bunker in Brooklyn,” said Steve. “Have you seen Agent Carter around? British dame? Red lipstick?”

“Might’ve once or twice. Why?” asked Bucky.

“I rode in the same car as her. Pointed out nearly every place in Brooklyn I had lost a fight on the way in,” said Steve. “I think, she thinks I’m soft in the head.”

“Hate to break it to you pal, you’ve always been soft in the head. Makes it a good thing your skull’s so hard to crack,” said Bucky. “Now stop distractin’ me with tales about pretty dames and get on with it.”

Steve tilted his head back and described the shop to Bucky, the secret entrance, the way the room looked like it came straight out of one of Bucky’s science-fiction novels, and the nervous men that filled it. There were five machines. Steve had been in the first round.

“It sounded a lot like what happened to you,” admitted Steve. “Injections and a bright light—Dr. Erskine’s serum and Stark’s vita-rays.”

“And it hurt,” said Bucky flatly.

“Hell, while it was going I thought, if we don’t make it, these things are already coffin-shaped, they can probably just drop us in the ground,” said Steve.

“Fuck, Steve,” groaned Bucky. “Don’t say that!”

“Sorry, Buck,” said Steve. “It was sort of like all the growing-up you did as a teenager, all the aches and pains you got, only compressed into about a minute and about hundred times more painful. All of us screamed. Shit, I think I started screaming first. But when we got out, we were all of us bigger than before, and near about as perfect as possible. Even my missing tooth grew back in.”

“From when you got beat up protecting Arnie Roth when we were kids?” asked Bucky.

Steve nodded solemnly. It was his first permanent molar, and the first and only tooth he ever lost. Steve’s Ma had been mighty pissed, but it wasn’t like Steve ever went out with the intention of getting punched in the jaw, and she knew that.

“So, how did this whole Captain America thing happen?” asked Bucky. “Would have been nice to see you at the front instead of those jerks the SSR brought with them.”

Steve hesitated. Word from on-high was that Reynolds’ death was to be kept quiet. He wasn’t sure he was allowed to tell Bucky about the other super soldier, and he didn’t definitely want to explain taking a bullet for Erskine. Bucky would throw a fit.

“There was an attack on the experiment. Afterward, Senator Brandt wanted to use a super soldier to sell war bonds. The SSR decided to send Erskine with the tour to keep him mobile and to test the limits of the super soldier serum. I was tapped to go,” said Steve. It was all true. It just wasn’t the _whole_ truth.

“Why’d they finally ship you overseas?” asked Bucky.

Steve winced. “There was an attack on the tour train. People died and not just Hydra agents. They shipped us over and planned to leave me and Erskine with the SSR while the girls finished the tour.”

Bucky straightened and turned to stare at Steve. “Are you telling me there is a full complement of chorus girls back at camp that you never once mentioned? Hell, if the men knew that they would run back.”

Steve chuckled. “The show has probably moved on already. The 107th was a lot closer to the front than the rest of the tour. The girls had a rough time of it.”

Bucky huffed and leaned back against the tree. They sat in silence until Bucky drifted back to sleep. Steve was awake for the rest of the night.

As dawn approached, he repeated the previous morning’s rounds. They hadn’t lost any more men, and the water collected the previous day had taken the edge off everyone’s thirst, but they were officially out of food, and the damp didn’t help matters.

The next day was a long slog through mud in the morning and a hard march over dirt in the afternoon. Steve made them stop for the night a mile short of the frontline. They would gather their strength for a final push in the morning.

Most of the men dropped where they stood, but Steve had too much energy and ended up walking through the temporary encampment talking to the soldiers. He was able to update them on the larger state of the war, having received regular briefs on the matter from the SSR, and he was able to reassure several dozen soldiers about life back home, having passed through hundreds of American cities while on tour.

He learned that while there were other captive British soldiers, Falsworth was the only survivor of his unit. Likewise, the French Resistance Fighters barely knew each other at all, having all been captured alone or in pairs when they stumbled on a Hydra outpost by accident. There were only four of Morita’s Nisei unit still alive—one of whom was black, which continually threw Steve—and only six men from Jones’ unit, none of whom ranked higher than private—though Jones was unofficially the leader since he had the most college, which was more than Steve had.

There were even a handful of Russian soldiers, Steve was dismayed to learn. They only spoke broken English, and though their cellmates had tried to translate, were relieved to receive a full explanation of what was going on in their own language. Steve was quick to reassure them that they would be transported back to Russia after they were debriefed but was careful not to mention the Strategic Scientific Reserve or even call himself Captain America, who plausibly associated with the super serum program. The Russians had their own deep-science division that was anti-Hydra but not allied with the SSR.

That was about the time Bucky showed up to drag him off to rest. Bucky was able to wait until they were sitting with the rest of the command group to grill him about his new-found language skills.

“Well, I had to keep myself occupied somehow,” said Steve.

“What putting on a show every night didn’t keep you occupied?” asked Dum Dum.

Steve grimaced. “There were the shows, the rehearsals, time spent in make-up, time spent glad-handing with the senator and his friends…”

“Sounds swell,” said Falsworth.

“Were the shows anything like the comics?” asked Morita.

Steve fixed his public smile on his face. “Every bond you buy is a bullet in the barrel of your best guy’s gun.”

Everyone recoiled.

“Jesus, Steve you look like you’d rather be shot,” said Bucky.

“Mind your language, Sgt. Barnes,” said Steve. “Everyone knows Captain America and the good soldiers of the U.S. Army don’t take swear.”

He received a round of disbelieving chuckles and groans.

“There were a few movies,” Steve told Morita in answer to his question. “I think some of the plots were lifted from the comics. I never read any of them.”

“They put your ugly mug in a movie?” asked Bucky.

Steve entertained them with a few stories from Hollywood’s backlot. A few of the tales came from watching Reynolds’ shoots. The incident where a set piece broke and Steve suddenly found himself holding 1000 lbs. of weight over his head was all him. The shot even made it into the final cut, not that he had gone to any of the premieres. Reynolds handled that sort of thing, when he was alive.

In the morning, Steve checked in with sentries and then ran the final mile to the front to make sure the road was still clear. He ran another half-mile circuit to make sure there weren’t any incoming troops. Satisfied they were in the clear, he made his way back to camp and checked back with sentries. It had barely been an hour.

When he got back, everyone awake and ready to get going. The lure of beds and, even better, food was enough to keep them going. They didn’t encounter any trouble and walked straight into camp.

After Steve requested medical attention for the wounded men, he submitted himself for official reprimand. He had rescued Bucky and the other men, but he had gone AWOL to do it, and Steve didn’t want to make a habit of flaunting orders.

Col. Phillips had years of practice at maintaining a steady expression, but Steve didn’t miss the surprise on Phillips’ face before he dismissed the request.

Steve wasn’t quite sure what do with himself next, but he was hoping a shower was in near future, when a cry went up from one of the soldiers in the back.

“Let’s hear it for Captain America!”

The startled look on Phillips’ face was priceless even though it must have matched Steve’s. The excited whoop from Bucky was even better.

“I’m afraid we never told them your real rank,” said Falsworth in the quiet afterward.

“Don’t be,” said Steve. “The story was always going to be that Captain America couldn’t hold himself back from the fight when he reached the front. Senator Brandt will be thrilled.”

Col. Phillips grimaced in camaraderie then stalked off, stopping only briefly to talk to Peggy. She walked over to Steve and eyed his mud-stained figure.

“You’re late,” she sniffed.

Steve pulled the transponder out of his pocket. “Couldn’t call my ride.”

“Excuses,” said Peggy. “I see you found your friend.”

“Bucky, meet Agent Carter. Agent Carter, this is Sgt. James Barnes of the 107th,” said Steve.

Steve watched as the two exchanged polite nods wearing equally blank expression. With a start, Steve realized they were both assessing each other. For what, he didn’t know.

“Agent Carter,” said Steve, breaking the tension.

She half-turned to face him. There was something wary in her gaze that made her tense in ways that Steve didn’t like. It reminded of girls back home when they got attention from men who didn’t know the meaning of the word no. Steve tried to keep his body language relaxed and open.

“Yes, Major Rogers?” she asked.

“Would you mind taking Bucky directly to Dr. Erskine?” asked Steve. “I think I need to debrief with the colonel.”

Peggy relaxed immediately. “Of course,” she said. “Though you can probably spare the time to change. They found your duffle. The chorus girls are holding it hostage.”

Steve blinked at her. “You mean, they’re still here?”

Not too long after, Steve found himself in what was a clearly delineated performers-only area of camp. The girls cheered at his return, as did some of men, but quickly sent him off to shower and change clothes. When he re-emerged, cheeks scrubbed pink after a quick but thorough rinse, Steve was immediately besieged by a chorus of questions, chastisements, and relieved laughter.

“I still don’t understand why you’re still here,” he said at the first opening.

“We wanted to know you got back safe,” said Angie.

“Lord knows they wouldn’t have told us anything once we moved on,” added Mary Frances.

“But how?” pressed Steve.

“Oh, Helen, talked Dr. Erskine into talking to the colonel for us,” said Sasha.

“Oh,” said Steve. “Helen. That makes sense.”

Helen’s nickname was “Helen of Troy” and it was well-deserved. She had long, naturally curly brown hair, startling green eyes, and a near-perfect hourglass figure. She was also sharp as tack. She had studied to be a nurse but had to drop-out when her father got sick and needed her tuition money to pay the bills. She did typing for a little while, but the USO paid better, especially on the Captain America tour where the girls got a little extra because of the danger. Helen also had an unrelenting crush on Dr. Erskine.

The doctor had taken awhile to notice her interest, and once he did, had listed to Steve every reason under the sun as to why it couldn’t possibly be true—starting with the age gap that wasn’t fifty years if only because it was exactly forty-nine. But Helen was a determined woman and had endeared herself to the man in part by taking notes for the doctor while he observed Steve and Reynolds’ tests and by asking intelligent questions.

Steve was fairly sure, if given enough time, that Helen could convince the doctor to marry her at the end of the war.

“Should I ask the colonel if Helen could stay-on to help Dr. Erskine?” asked Steve. “Would that throw off the show?”

There were squeals of excitement and hasty reassurances that they could definitely find a work-around if Steve managed it.

Eventually they settled down and got to the real work of the evening, scolding Steve for running off without a word.

“And stealing Lou-Ann’s helmet,” added Ruth. “You could have at least stolen a real one. We’re in the middle of an army camp. Surely there was a spare somewhere.”

Steve didn’t want to get into his reasons for avoiding the quarter-masters. “Where is Lou-Ann? I think she’d like to yell at me herself.”

“She’s surely forgiven you, since her husband was one of the lot you rescued,” said Betty.

“She’s got him squirreled away in her tent,” added Mary Frances slyly. “We won’t be seeing them for a while.”

Steve blushed at the implication, and the girls’ laughter started up again. Sasha waved them silent with imperious flick of the hand.

She then stabbed Steve square in the chest with a pointed finger. “Stealing helmets? You should have stolen a proper uniform. What were you thinking running into enemy territory wearing your costume? A costume with a big, white star in middle screaming look at me, I’m a target!”

Steve would have protested if he hadn’t had the greatest idea. Captain America couldn’t just disappear. He was a symbol, an icon, and all that was left of Reynolds until the end of the war at least.

“What’s that face?” demanded Sasha. “That’s not a good face. That’s an _idea_ face, Rogers, and all of your ideas are crazy.”

“Well, Steve, you really have been spending time with these ladies, if they know you that well.”

The women jumped at the unexpected male voice. Steve just turned and smiled.

Bucky was looking better having had a chance to clean up some and change clothes. He had been walked in by Helen, who must have been with Dr. Erskine at the SSR tents, and was vibrating with excitement.

“Girls,” she said. “This is Steve’s friend, _Bucky_ _Barnes_.”

The stunned quiet erupted into further excitement. Bucky was very nearly swarmed as much as Steve had been earlier. His confused, alarm smoothed out as he listened to them explain how Steve had told them stories and read them his letters and apparently made it sound how Bucky hung the moon in the sky. Bucky shot Steve a cutting look over their heads and then proceeded to turn up the charm.

Sasha inched closer to Steve. “So he’s the reason you went haring off without a word to the wise?”

“Bucky’s my best friend. I couldn’t stay here when I knew he was out there,” said Steve.

“Your best friend?” said Sasha. She leaned in closer and said in a low voice, “Albert and I compared notes. We agreed you’ve had a lot more practice with men.”

Steve tore his gaze away from Bucky to look at her. “It’s not like that. Bucky’s always had good luck with dames. He deserves someone can live out his life with.”

Sasha frowned faintly. She had been a dancer before the war. She was from the same area of Brooklyn as Steve. She was more understanding than most. “And that person can’t be you?”

“No, I’d just drag him down,” said Steve.

Sasha’s expression morphed to something more… shrewd. “I think, after what’s happened, that you’ll find you lift him up.”

Steve was ready to argue the point. He had had several arguments with Bucky along these same lines—ones that usually ended with one or both of them going out with a girl, or when they got really heated, another guy—but he realized that most of his perfectly valid reasoning had revolved around his health. Before, it had been doubtful that Steve would live to see thirty. There was no need for Bucky to hitch himself permanently to a fading star. But things were different now. Steve could support Bucky as much as Bucky supported Steve.

“Maybe we lift each other up,” said Steve quietly.

“All the great loves do,” said Sasha and she brushed her fingers gently across his cheek. “Now, I need to go talk to your _friend_.”

Sasha waded into the gaggle of women to join Mary Frances, who was already dominating the conversation with Bucky. He shot Steve a pleading look. Clearly, Bucky could recognize an impending interrogation. Steve held up his hands in an obvious show of helplessness. Rescuing Bucky from Hydra was one thing. The USO chorus line was another matter entirely.

 

[1] Will you tell your comrades the plan, please?

[2] Yes, sir.

[3] I am Jacques Dernier of the resistance.

[4] Naturally.

[5] But I heard you say Captain America.

[6] My God.


	3. Chapter 3

By the end of the week, they were back in London. The rescued men from the factory needed to be reunited with their companies—if there was anyone left to reunite with—or shipped home.

Steve spent most of his time in meetings answering questions. What had he seen of the Red Skull’s operations? What did he discuss with Red Skull? Why had he relied on a civilian pilot and a woman for back-up? Why hadn’t he taken a bigger gun or a real uniform? What was he thinking, wasting the money the government had spent on making him by running straight into danger?

Steve had gone very quiet at that question then asked, “Why do you send tanks into battle? They’re expensive. The fuel, the ammunition, the metal, the _men_ trained to drive them—all of that’s gone if a shell lands in the wrong place. So why use tanks at all? Why not keep them on base?”

Once they were made, not using tanks on the battlefield was the real waste of resources. In Steve’s mind, he and the super soldiers were the same. He was still furious that none of the others had done anything to prevent the men of 107th from being captured or volunteered to lead a rescue mission.

He also had meetings about Captain America. Rumor was Senator Brandt had been thrilled by the press generated by Captain America’s daring rescue of 400 men, and Steve was guiltily aware that there was an award ceremony in the States that he was skipping, but he was afraid that if he went home, he’d never make it back to the front. There had been some discussion of letting Albert take over the role for the USO tour once they set up all of the wires and stage props that Steve and Reynolds had never needed to use. But Steve argued that putting an actor into the Captain America costume would break down the narrative that the rescue had built and make the poor man target.

Steve was pretty sure that all of the generals and colonels he talked to thought he was crazy to want to go into battle as a piece of propaganda. Steve almost thought he was crazy because he hated all of the shows and the attention and everything Reynolds had loved about being part of the tour. Except, _Red Skull_ had heard of Captain America, had known about the movies, even if he hadn’t actually seen them. Captain America was a symbol for the SSR as much as Red Skull was a symbol for Hydra, and as he had learned watching Brandt skillfully manipulate Captain America to milk the country for money, symbols held a power of their own.

After the Captain America situation was resolved—and no the name would not change to Major America to match his rank—Steve had meetings about his proposed team. He had expected some resistance. Morita was Japanese. Jones was Black. Falsworth was British. Dernier was a freedom fighter and not a military man at all. Steve got pushback for all of those reasons, but there was something else that no one was willing to voice aloud. Not until Steve mentioned the idea to Bucky in passing—the only one of his proposed team he’d had a chance to see once they reached London—and his friend explained that the super soldiers worked exclusively with other super soldiers.

The men of the 107th called them wolf packs. The super soldiers had organized themselves into groups of three to five individuals, who were sent out alongside the regular troops. They received their own orders from an SSR handler—orders which seemed to be kill everything Hydra—and ignored the normal men except to occasionally—literally—run them over on their way to destroy something else. Hodge led the largest pack of the toughest soldiers, and all of the other “supes” listened to him. Col. Phillips had some authority over them by virtue of his rank and the fact that he handed out the orders that sent them up against Hydra, but it was a very tenuous control.

Even listening to Bucky describe the situation made Steve’s blood boil. What was worse, it didn’t take long for Steve to figure out that the top brass were worried he wanted retribution, or something similar, from the other men for failing to inform the other prisoners that he was actually a major. The situation would have been laughable, if it weren’t horrifying. Once Steve cleared up that assumption, the last major hurdle was Colonel Phillips.

The colonel wanted Steve to take command of the entire super soldier program. He was still the only super soldier to have received a promotion to major and therefore had the necessary rank. While that was true as far as the army was concerned, Steve couldn’t believe Colonel Phillips thought they would actually listen to him. Despite his dramatic growth, Steve was still the smallest of the super-soldiers. For all his work with SSR agents protecting the tour and raiding Hydra look-outs, he still had the least field experience. And the other soldiers, barring the now-deceased Reynolds, at best ignored him and at worst outright hated him.

Steve had had one encounter with Hodge back at the camp. Steve had left the command tent and was on his way to check-in with Dr. Erskine, habit for Steve and a pleasant diversion for both of them, when Hodge appeared like a wall in front of him. It was the first time Steve had gotten a good look at one of the other super soldiers and Steve knew what Dugan meant by “not normal.”

Hodge’s clothes didn’t settle quite right on his frame. They bunched around his muscles and around his joints. There was a thickening about his neck and jaw that made Steve think of snakes. His brow had hardened giving his eyes a sunken, shadowed look. He could pass for a man, but Steve’s first thought was monster. The smirk on his face didn’t improve his look at all.

The soldiers of the 107th, Steve had noticed already, avoided the super soldiers completely, and the lower-ranking members of the SSR only approached when absolutely necessary, so they were suddenly in an ever-increasing bubble of space.

“Welcome to the front, Major Rogers,” said Hodge with a sloppy salute. Steve noticed the fingers of his hands were longer than they used to be, and that he spoke barely above a whisper.

Erskine, Steve, and Reynolds had taken a few days to test the super soldiers’ hearing. They had discovered quickly that Steve and Reynolds could hear well above and below the normal range of sounds. Also, they could distinguish individual sounds in a cacophony, understand a conversation spoken at normal volume more than a thousand feet away, and could speak so quietly that no one but another super soldier could overhear them, though one of the SSR agents could still read their lips when they spoke.

While everyone agreed that the latter talent would be useful if they were ever deployed on missions together, it wasn’t very helpful when they worked with regular people. And as Reynolds pointed out, it was rude to talk around other people like that. (Steve had been a bit too excited about being able to hear, period, to consider things like rudeness. A series of ear infections and fevers as a child had left him partially deaf, which ruined his balance and largely his appreciation for music. However, it didn’t take him more than a few weeks to be sick of the “Star-Spangled Man with a Plan.”)

“Captain Hodge,” answered Steve at regular volume. He had to tilt his head back slightly to meet Hodge’s eyes, and he didn’t return the salute, which, well, the man had volunteered for Project Rebirth but as far as Steve had seen hadn’t done anything else respectable since.

Hodge’s lazy smirk shifted into a sneer. “Those golden leaves on your shoulders don’t mean shit, Rogers. You only got them because you died, and you couldn’t even do that right.”

Steve kept his face blank. He had made the same argument when he first learned of the promotion. But that was before he had rescued the P.O.W.s from the factory. He could work to earn his rank. What he couldn’t do was punish a lower-ranking officer for an insult no one else could hear.

“If you think it’s so easy, then why don’t you try it?” suggested Steve.

Hodge’s face twisted in fury, and he let out a low growl. “You’re going to get what’s coming to you, Rogers. You’re a dead man walking.”

“At least I’m still a man,” countered Steve.

Turning on his heel and walking away was one of the hardest things Steve had ever done. He wasn’t a kid fending off bullies in the streets anymore. He was a soldier fighting against Nazis and Hydra. The fight wasn’t about individual men anymore unless Hitler or Red Skull showed up on his radar. Not to mention, a throw down with Hodge would probably destroy half the camp and get Steve back on Colonel Phillip’s shit-list.

Since then, anytime Steve ventured remotely close to a group of super soldiers, one or more of them would call out “Dead Man Walking” or “Dead Man.” Anyone else would have found it unnerving. Steve was mostly immune. He had been living on borrowed time his whole life and had lots of practice at ignoring the sword hanging over his neck. Too much practice, Bucky would be the first to say. Occasionally, Steve would remember waking up on the autopsy table, but those occurrences became rarer and rarer as Steve adjusted to the insults.

It took several meetings to convince Colonel Phillips that Steve would be more effective leading soldiers who didn’t fight him every step of the way. But eventually Steve had official permission to form his new team under the auspices of the SSR.

“Agent Carter is the only handler we have available for your unit,” explained Phillips.

“I understand,” said Steve.

Phillips narrowed his eyes at him. “You will receive orders from her, and you’ll report to her following the completion of a mission. She will effectively serve as your superior officer.”

“Yes, sir,” said Steve bewildered by the repeated emphasis. He cast about for the reason. “Is this about going behind your back for the rescue, sir?”

Phillips grunted. “While that happened, and you are never to do anything like it again, some of the other men have trouble with Agent Carter because she is a _she_.”

Steve blinked in honest confusion. “Agent Carter has years of experience with the SSR and a much better handle on the overall conflict with Hydra. I don’t see how her being a woman effects any of that, sir.”

Phillips grunted again though the sound was more thoughtful this time. “Keep that in mind. Now, get out of here, Rogers. I’ve heard your crack team is out drinking the town dry.”

Steve hid his wince with a salute and went to track down the men who would hopefully be his team.

He found them, as the colonel had suggested, at a pub merrily drinking away their time and their hazard pay. All of them agreed to join up, a little too quickly, with more of a devil-may-care attitude than Steve would have liked. He resolved to ask in the morning when they were sober. Then he considered the effect of opening a tab and decided he would wait until the afternoon when they were less hungover.

Rather than rejoining the team, Steve moved down the bar where Bucky was nursing his own drink. He looked worried and tired. Bucky, out of all the men rescued from the Hydra factory, deserved to go home the most, yet a selfish part of Steve was thankful that his friend was too stubborn to see sense and accept his discharge papers.

Steve slid into a free space next to Bucky and sent him a wry smile. “You ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?”

Bucky snorted. “Hell no! The little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight. I'm following him”

Steve felt his heart relax from the initial burst of fear at hearing the word “no” pass Bucky’s lips. He matched Bucky’s smug smile with one of his own.

“Seriously though, _Captain_ America?”

Steve shrugged. “Major America doesn’t have the same ring.”

“Tell me you’re dropping the uniform, at least,” said Bucky. “It’s got a giant target in the middle of the chest.”

“About that,” began Steve.

The pub fell relatively silent. Steve glanced over his shoulder and saw Peggy making her way through the crowd. Her dress hugged her figure in a way her perfectly tailored uniform couldn’t hope to match, and the vivid red color stood out against the drab brown and tan of the soldiers’ uniforms like a rose against the dirt. Steve’s fingers itched for paper and pen, wanting to capture the moment of stillness in colored ink.

When they realized she was aiming for them, Steve and Bucky drew themselves upright.

“Maj. Rogers, Sgt. Barnes,” she said with a brisk nod to them both.

To any ordinary person, she would have sounded calm, but Steve could hear a faint tremor in her voice and the way the breath caught in her throat before she spoke. A casual glance would describe her body-language as open and inviting, but there was a subtle tension in her shoulders that put Steve on edge.

Peggy might have spoken kindly to Steve before the experiment and been bold as brass at the base camp when she accused him of being late, but in the middle of the pub, out of the protective armor that was her SSR uniform, she was nervous around him and determined not to show it. Steve knew all about putting on a good face, and if she needed it, then he would respect it.

“Agent Carter,” he said nodding in return.

“Ma’am,” said Bucky looking particularly interested in the way her dress showed off her curves.

“Col. Phillips tells me we will be working together,” said Peggy.

“Yes, ma’am,” agreed Steve. “You’ll be”—he knew instantly that “handling” was not the right word to use in a bar full of drunken soldiers—“issuing orders to our team.”

Bucky blinked in surprise. Steve could almost see him force down the habitual, near-instinctive urge to flirt. Peggy quirked her mouth in a slight smile at the pair of them. If she had noticed Steve’s brief verbal stumble, she chose not to mention it.

“Just so. Stark wants to see you at 0800 tomorrow, Major, and Dr. Erskine wants to see both of you at 0900. He mentioned wanting to run some tests?” Peggy’s voice ended on a question.

Apparently, Dr. Erskine hadn’t shared the initial results of Bucky’s bloodwork, which were, as far as Steve understood them, that Zola’s experiment had definitely done something but what that something was remained a mystery. With Dr. Erskine’s permission, Steve had read the technical proposal for Operation Rebirth. He had memorized the file, but that didn’t mean he understood the details. He was sure that whatever had happened to Bucky was just as complicated.

“Just some follow-up questions,” said Bucky breezily. “The worry-wart here wanted the doc to check me out personally.”

“I remember,” said Peggy. Her tone implied that she knew something was up, but she was willing to let it go for now. “I’ll see you gentlemen in the morning then.”

 “Yes, ma’am,” said Steve. Bucky echoed him half-a-beat behind.

Peggy nodded again and rejoined the crowd. Steve watched her go with a frown while Bucky slouched against the bar.

“You could’ve asked her to dance,” said Bucky.

“She’s technically our superior officer,” said Steve.

Bucky shot him a wry glance. “Yeah? Well, she couldn’t take her eyes off you. Didn’t even blink. Was almost like I wasn’t there at all.”

“It wasn’t like that,” said Steve, frown deepening. “I think she might’ve been, not scared exactly, but careful. She was worried I might jump her.”

“You?” asked Bucky. The sheer shock in his voice did a lot to improve Steve’s mood. “You’d never do something like that.”

“She doesn’t know that,” said Steve reasonably. “We talked a few times, but I was a lot smaller then. And a lot of the men at Camp Lehigh were rude.”

Even Reynolds had flirted too much with some of the girls before Steve took him to task. He eased up a bit after they started sparring and burned off some excess energy and stayed focused on the girls who wanted that kind of attention. On the front, there weren’t that many girls around. Steve wondered if Peggy had had to fend off some unwelcome advances.

“Agent Carter looks like she can handle herself,” said Bucky as if he knew the direction Steve’s thoughts had taken.

“She decked Hodge on our first day,” said Steve. He didn’t add that Hodge was smaller then, too.

“I would pay good money to see that,” said Bucky wistfully.

Steve did his best to describe the scene. Bucky’s bright grin as Steve pantomimed Peggy’s wicked fast right hook relaxed something in Steve’s chest. He hadn’t seen his friend really smile since that night at the expo, and Steve had missed it.

Steve and Bucky nursed their single beers exchanging lighter stories of their time apart. Steve couldn’t get drunk without fisting out a wad of cash even he couldn’t afford. He and Reynolds had tested the possibility with some of the train engineers’ home-brewed rotgut. There was a sweet-spot between alcohol poisoning and sobriety where they managed a faint buzz, but it required near constant drinking to maintain and wasn’t worth the effort, and Bucky had never been one to overindulge claiming it interfered with his dancing.

When the last of Steve’s newly formed team lurched out of the pub into the night, Steve closed the tab. He winced faintly at the amount of money spent on liquor. It didn’t matter that his not-inconsiderable pay was mostly untouched after the better part of year spent on the Captain America USO tour. He was definitely cutting the group off early the next time.

“I better track down my bunk,” said Bucky once they were in the street. “It’ll be quiet at least. Everyone will be either passed out drunk or spending the night with someone else.”

Steve cocked his head. “Do you want to spend the night with me? They put up the officers in a hotel. My room is almost as big as our apartment.”

“Well, if it won’t put you out,” said Bucky.

They walked to Steve’s hotel in a companionable silence. Except for the concierge, the foyer and halls were empty of people. Apparently, the other officers chose a more reasonable time to turn in, or they had taken up with company themselves.

Steve had scarcely gotten the door closed and locked behind them before he had his arms full of Bucky. It didn’t matter that the angle was off—Steve was just about this same height when he sat on the kitchen table back home, and they had done plenty on that table—because Bucky tasted just the same as he did back then.

The kissing escalated quickly and it wasn’t long before Bucky was pressing gentle nips and kisses along Steve’s left jaw. (Typical Bucky maneuver, leading with the left side, and it made sex with anyone else seem strange and backwards.) Steve knew what spot he was aiming for. The best and worst thing about being with Bucky was that his friend was already familiar with Steve’s sensitive places, which were even more sensitive thanks to the serum.

Steve tried to distract him by untucking his shirt and running his hands up Bucky’s sides looking for the other’s own hotspots. All it did was surprise Bucky into biting down and making Steve whimper.

“Sorry,” murmured Bucky quietly. The hotel walls were thick and no one was around to hear them, not even the other super soldiers, who were billeted elsewhere, but they had spent years in apartments with paper for walls and were used to keeping quiet during sex.

Bucky kissed the spot he had bitten and pulled back to examine it. “Huh.”

“What?” asked Steve.

“Guess you don’t bruise so easily anymore,” said Bucky. He grinned. “That could be fun. What does it take to make a hickey on that new skin of yours?”

“More time than anyone has spent so far,” Steve said and stole another kiss before Bucky could propose any tests of his own.

Bucky smiled into the kiss ruining it completely. The smile turned into a soft moan when Steve’s hands slid down to grip Bucky’s ass. He broke away to rest his head on Steve’s shoulder.

“Damn, it’s going to take some time to get used to you being all big like this,” said Bucky.

“Is it a problem?” asked Steve nervously.

Bucky chuckled. “The best sound I ever heard was that ticker of yours running steady for a change. Even if it is a little slow.”

Steve blushed. “That’s something you see in serious athletes—slow resting heart rates.”

“I bet we can do something about the resting part,” Bucky whispered into his ear. He forced himself closer to Steve grinding their erections together through the thick layers of their uniform pants.

“Yes,” hissed Steve reflexively squeezing Bucky’s rear as he tugged him even closer.

“Your hands feel the same,” murmured Bucky. “You even smell the same.”

Realization bloomed in the back of Steve’s mind and manifested as ice-water in his veins. He froze in place, every muscle tensed.  Given their positions, Bucky couldn’t help but notice.

“What is it?” he asked.

“We can’t,” said Steve. He didn’t meet Bucky’s eyes but felt the incredulous stare all the same.

“Why the hell not?”

Steve hung his head. “We’ll get blue tickets home.”

“Not if we don’t tell anyone,” said Bucky. “I don’t know what it’s been like on that Captain America tour of yours, but we don’t have to report every little thing to the U.S. Army.”

Steve shook his head. “No. It’s—” he very reluctantly freed a hand to touch the tip of his nose “—the other super soldiers will be to smell it.”

“You’re joking,” said Bucky.

“No,” said Steve. “All of our senses are enhanced. I can notice all sorts of things about a person you wouldn’t expect.”

“Yeah?” muttered Bucky.

“I noticed how much you liked Agent Carter in her dress,” said Steve.

“So, you can, what? Smell lust now?” asked Bucky dubiously.

“Not exactly,” said Steve. “Your heart beat sped up and your skin flushed, you started to breathe faster, your muscles tensed, your eyes dilated, and there was a lot of blood flow south. It’s even easier to smell if a dame gets hot and bothered.”

Except for that last bit, sexual arousal was astonishingly similar to a fear response. It took a lot of practice for Steve and Reynolds to sort out which was which, especially when some people liked a partner who was that much bigger than them. Steve wondered if the super soldiers on the front had taken the time to learn the difference.  Somehow, he doubted it.

“But afterwards, the smell of semen lingers,” added Steve.

Steve and Reynolds had a lot of practice at not noticing if one of the girls spent the night in someone’s bunk—Steve more than Reynolds. It was obvious if they had been with a man and even more so if they had been with one of the super soldiers. Ordinary men’s scents were virtually identical, the enhanced soldiers’ not so much. Even a rubber couldn’t contain the smell.

Bucky groaned and collapsed against Steve. “My balls are gonna be as blue as your costume. What if we sucked each other off?”

Steve frowned. He definitely couldn’t risk spilling on Bucky, but Steve could probably do something for the other man if he were careful.

“Turn around,” said Steve tugging on Bucky’s arm.

Steve shuffled back until he was leaning against the wall and Bucky leaning against him, his back to Steve’s front.

“Couldn’t have done it this way before,” said Steve into Bucky’s ear as he unbuckled his friend’s belt. “I probably would’ve been crushed between you and the wall.”

“Don’t call a dame fat when you’re trying to get her to put out,” groaned Bucky. “Didn’t I teach you anything about women?”

Steve closed one hand around Bucky’s dick and started to stroke lightly. “I’m pretty sure this means you ain’t a dame.” He brought his other hand up and pressed two fingers to Bucky’s mouth. “You’ll need to suck if you want some slick.” Steve couldn’t risk getting his spit on Bucky’s privates if one of the other super soldiers paid extra attention to his team.

“Bossy,” mumbled Bucky as Steve fingers slid past his lips.

Steve realized he had made a tactical error almost instantly as Bucky proceeded to demonstrate his skills at fellatio on Steve’s digits. Steve lost his steady, teasing rhythm on Bucky’s dick and felt his friend’s pleased hum.

Steve changed plans instantly. He carefully slid a finger under Bucky’s foreskin to press at the very tip of his penis, where a pearl of pre-come was already forming. Bucky gasped in surprise. His body writhing at the sensation. Steve moved his newly freed hand to join the other.

Bucky moaned softly. “I thought you said it was too risky.”

“I can’t leave my best pal hanging, can I?” asked Steve overly sweet.

“You little shit,” said Bucky. “How the fuck am I supposed to return the favor?”

“You’ll be something nice to think of when I’m jerking off later. Better than any pin-up girl,” promised Steve.

“Yeah?” asked Bucky. He reached up a hand to tug gently on Steve’s hair. “Take a look at that.”

Steve lifted his head. On the opposite wall was an old oak vanity complete with mirror. It was positioned to show anyone who came through the door, and it caught the pair of them perfectly.

Bucky was a sight to see. Hair mussed, face flushed, and eyes bright with lust. He hadn’t even taken off his jacket. Steve had just stretched the collar of his shirt to expose his long neck and throat. The end of said shirt was unbuttoned just enough to bare a hint of taut stomach. His pants and belt hung loose about his hips just low enough to free his red and weeping cock. He looked thoroughly debauched cradled in the arms of the blond man in the mirror.

“Holy fuck, Stevie.”

Bucky’s voice cut through the low, possessive growl that blanketed the room. It took Steve a moment to recover himself and process what had happened. He immediately blushed bright red and tucked his head into the junction of Bucky’s neck and shoulder.

“What just happened?” asked Bucky sounding slightly dazed.

“Nothing,” said Steve quickly. He resumed his hand job without looking up again. He could remember exactly what Bucky looked like after all.

“Were you jealous of your own reflection?” Bucky half-laughed, half-gasped.

“Shut up,” muttered Steve.

“You were,” said Bucky. “Fuck, Stevie, didn’t I say your hands felt just the same? Hotter than hell, but the exact same. The rest of you just finally grew to match.”

Bucky shoved back with his hips, grinding his tailbone into Steve’s growing erection. They both groaned desperately. Steve, with the ease of much practice, performed a twist he knew Bucky liked and bit down on Bucky’s shoulder hard enough to bruise.

Bucky tensed. In a flash of speed, Steve pulled out his handkerchief and caught Bucky’s come before it could splatter on their clothes or the floor.

Bucky slumped against Steve when he finished. “Fuck.”

“Close enough,” said Steve.

“You shouldn’t be able to make jokes when all your blood is in your dick,” muttered Bucky. “It feels like there’s a fucking steel rod in your pants.”

“Then maybe you’d be more comfortable on the bed,” suggested Steve.

“In a minute,” said Bucky.

Steve was pretty sure he couldn’t stand another minute of Bucky lying on top of him, not without wasting the effort of the hand job.

“This is revenge,” he told Bucky and swept him into a bridal carry.

Bucky yelped loudly. “I have never done anything like this to you,” he protested.

Steve scoffed—Bucky had tried it at least four times and actually succeed once when they were twelve—and carried him in mincing steps over to the bed. Luckily it wasn’t that far away. Steve dropped him a short distance onto the bed, Bucky bounced slightly, and turned to visit the ensuite.

“What, I don’t get to watch?” said Bucky. “I don’t remember you being shy, Rogers.”

“If you watch, I’m going to get hard again as soon as I knock one out,” said Steve.

“You can do that?” asked Bucky sounding intrigued.

“Yes,” said Steve lifting his eyes heavenward. “I’ll be back.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” said Bucky.

Steve closed the door to the ensuite bathroom and almost ripped off his belt in his haste to get it unbuckled. A handful of tugs and he was coming. The image of Bucky in the mirror flashed in his mind, and he was hard again. Steve took a deep breath and jerked himself off a little more slowly the second time. When his cock threatened to fill for a third time, he concentrated on his memory of waking up on the operating table and felt all of his heat drain away.

When Steve stepped back into the main room, he found Bucky had stripped off his jacket, shirt, shoes, and socks. He was still wearing his briefs, which was probably good idea considering how Steve felt about sharing the bed (a little too enthusiastic). Bucky regarded Steve’s identical apparel with equal enthusiasm.

“You’re right about this room being as big as our apartment,” said Bucky once they were both situated in the bed.

Steve had automatically defaulted to being the little spoon, even though they were of a similar size now. He didn’t mind though. Having Bucky at his back was comfortable and familiar regardless of the setting.

“I told the bellhop, but I don’t think he believed me,” admitted Steve.

“What did happen to our apartment?” asked Bucky.

“I packed up the important stuff and gave it to your ma,” said Steve. “Any new tenants have probably been there for months.”

“Those poor bastards,” said Bucky. There was a moment when Steve thought Bucky had settled, then he said, “You’ll wake me up early enough that I can get a clean set of clothes before I go to see the doc, right?”

“I will,” said Steve. “Go to sleep, Buck.”

“What if a maid comes in?” asked Bucky. “You’re the one who’s worried about getting a blue ticket.”

Steve rolled his eyes. He heaved himself up, forcing Bucky flat onto his back, and draped himself over his friend, hiding him from view of the door.  Bucky was partially crushed by Steve’s new weight, but Steve figured Bucky would shove him off if he got too heavy.

“Go to sleep,” said Steve firmly.

“Yes sir,” muttered Bucky. A moment later he added, “Better than an electric blanket.”

“We could never afford an electric blanket,” said Steve.

He could tell that Bucky was mostly asleep at this point. Sometimes Bucky’s brain got stuck on awake. Usually an orgasm was enough to calm him down but not this time. Steve wondered if it was a side-effect of whatever happened to Bucky at the factory. It wasn’t like they could ask Dr. Erskine about this, even if, as Steve suspected, the man wouldn’t care, someone else might over hear them.

“Always wanted to get one for you,” said Bucky. “Would’ve been good in the middle of winter. Maybe staved off some of those colds.”

“Not much use when the electricity cut-out, and I had you when it got really cold,” said Steve.

He and Bucky had two beds in their apartment. They had to for when their friends came over, when Bucky, or rarely Steve, brought home a girl, or when they fought so much they couldn’t stand to look at each other, much less touch each other. That last happened more often than other people would have suspected, and it was usually Steve’s fault, which would have surprised no one. And honestly, except for winter, they spent most of their nights in their separate beds because their apartment was on the third floor and it was too damn hot the rest of the year.

Still, they had spent a lot of time napping together on their ratty couch. Steve had been small enough to lie full on top of Bucky in those days.

“Still got me,” mumbled Bucky.

Only barely, thought Steve, remembering Bucky pale, weak, and strapped down in the factory. His previously loosely draped arm tightened around Bucky’s chest and pulled him closer.

“Always got you,” said Steve. “Now, sleep.”

He was answered by a snore. Steve pressed a kiss to Bucky’s cheek and dropped into his own land of dreams.


End file.
